


In Threes

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Experimental Style, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Implied Relationships, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: In which Max finds three old women knitting in a cave and asks them for a favor.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a really old one! And, frankly, it was a weird one that I still don't know how to edit to make more sense so it's being preserved exactly as-is. Yes I am aware of the irony of putting an importance on threes and then only having two parts.
> 
> Originally posted on tumblr- [part one](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/133612809921/i-wish-you-would-write-a-fic-where-max-finds-three) and [part two](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/133703023386/but-what-is-it-that-max-asks-for-the-crones-to)!

It's rooted in one of those old stories, the ones that precede the fall of the world, the ones that have a kernel of truth hidden away inside them. When the moon's in the right phase and the stars align and you've splashed some wine and dripped some blood and anointed yourself in guzz and called thrice like a long-extinct bird-

The details and little rituals don't matter, the point is: when you need them, you'll come across them. 

Max doesn't even realize he's been searching until he sees the sort of there-and-gone-again flickers that mean fire of a peculiar sort crackling inside the mouth of the cave, greenish-blue from salt in the wood. 

There's three of them, of course (these things always come in threes) and they're as old as the hills, the sky, the sands. Each one has a piece of- he doesn't know what to call it, but it's vast and bright and they're constructing it out of jewel-toned yarns, the sort of colors you can't find anymore except on the wings of beetles, needles click-clacking as they work. Between the three of them there's a single eye, dim and watery, unwavering when it fixes on him. 

"Well, Max?" one of them prompts. 

"Aren't you going to ask?" another says. 

"Come a long way for nothing," says the third. None of their hands falter as they knit together whatever it is they're working on. 

There's no doubt about who- about _what_ \- it is he's stumbled across. There are only so many crones to be had this deep in the wastes, much less ones that radiate the sort of quiet energy you can taste on the back of your tongue like lightning. 

They were spinning wool into yarn, the last time he'd seen them, and seemed not half so old as they were now. The first time he hardly recalls- the smoke had been thick, damp new wood obscuring their maiden faces, the cave filled with soft far-away sounds. They hadn't struck a bargain, that first time, no matter how he begged. 

Max thinks about the sorts of boasts he's heard during fireside tales from those who claim to have met them- cars faster than sound, engines that run on piss, loved ones gone from stiff and cold to warm and living again. Fantastic, unbelievable, but bloody oath true, every one (they never boast about the cost, the deals that go south, the way none of it ever _stays_ ). 

One of them sets down her needles with a click, snips at a few threads with an old rusty pair of shears. She's not the one with the eye, he doesn't think- he can't quite tell them apart, even looking head-on- but she doesn't hesitate in her movements. 

"Speak up, Max," one says. 

"You're here, so you might as well ask," continues another. 

The third says nothing, just regards him with her possibly-eyeless face, shears dangling from her bony fingers. 

There's a lot he could ask for, a lot he's willing to pay for in blood and sweat and peace of mind, a lot of things he _wants_ on a deep visceral level. The voices in his head to quiet down, or his enemies to be one step slower, or his map to always show true, or his canteen to never empty. 

Max thinks about what he _needs_ , though, and that's a far shorter list. He almost can't bring himself to say it, the words for his request rattling around his hollow body, sticking in his throat like so much sand. But he's old and tired and there’s only one thing he's truly needed for a long while now. 

"Please," he rasps, the words drawing blood as they well out of him, "Take it back."

The knitting pauses. The crones smile as one, their needles and shears flashing in the light of the fire, eye gleaming in satisfaction. 

"A neat job, no loose threads,"

"The pattern will hold to it,"

"And what will you give us, Max?"

"All of it," he says. It had always been a bad deal, all the worst parts of living with none of the reprieves, nothing truly gained but an illusion of safety, like burning your own car before the raiders get there. It seemed worth it, for a while, but it's been a long stretch of years and there's green waiting for him if only he can find the way back. 

"Agreed," one of them replies. Another motions for him to step closer, the third already moving over the cloth they were knitting with quick fingers. Finding the pattern they had woven in for him, looking for the thread that would unravel it. 

Max looks deep into the cloudy eye of the crones and-

He blinks. The cave is empty, the women gone, the fire nothing but cold ashes stirring in the breeze. 

Within his chest his heart lurches, stutters, picks up a rhythm it hasn't held in years.


	2. Chapter 2

The question is, really, which was the price and which was the gift. Did the triple women take Max's heart in payment for making him immortal, or did they take away his ability to die when they quieted the pains of his heart?

Because, see, at first the trade worked in Max's favor, whichever way 'round the deal was. He didn't have the throbbing grief of his lost loved ones eating away at him anymore, and somehow no matter how many times he was hit, he never found himself stopped entirely.

But rage doesn't live in the heart, it burns through the marrow of bones, so that stayed with him. And fear twists and coils inside the gut, sorrow flickers at the corners of the eyes; hope, that long-ago Pandora's gift, resides deep inside the lungs, spoils the words he speaks until the madness in his ears silences him completely for a time.

(Grief, he learns far too late, swims through the blood even if there's no heart to pump it)

Eventually Max discovers that he might not die, but he can't quite live, either, not when he's hollowed from the chest out.

He meets people and he kills them, or he helps them, or he does a bit of both, and eventually he begins to grow tired of the endless sands that he had once thought would be his salvation.

And he helps Furiosa find her Green Place again because happiness lives skittering across the skin and there's something about the way she speaks that makes him want to listen past the sweep of whispering voices.

So Max watches her grow a green place and he remembers what it is that the heart holds- for all that he can't feel it for himself anymore, he's never been able to forget. Desire resides precisely where you'd think it would, and contentment swirls around his fingertips, and only if he doesn't let himself stop moving is it anywhere close to enough.

After a time she leaves her heart for him, tucked up safe as he can make it inside the stitching of his jacket, and doesn't ask for the same in return. But longing fills all the hollow spaces of him until he finds himself at the mouth of a familiar cave for the third time (these things always happen in threes).

The women illuminated by the crackling flames aren't swell-bellied mothers anymore, nor young fluttering maidens either, but crones of the sort not often found in these harsh wastes. Just as maidens believe that time softens all wounds and will refuse to trade, and grown women know that some hurts must be cut away to heal and will make the bargain, so do crones understand that nothing is meant to last forever and will unravel the stitches gone askew.

So they give Max back his heart, dusty and cracked and a little dried out but less broken then he recalls, and take his tiresome deathlessness for themselves again.

What he hadn't quite remembered is the way it hurts, to love another person. The ventricles of his heart ache with every beat, agony he hasn't felt in years upon years.

And he's tired, and older than he should be, and the fear in his belly churns as he remembers how much that pain was only the beginning of the torment and maybe it would be better to ride out the last of his (no longer endless) days alone, with his wheels carrying him wherever the fates please.

But the ache in his chest is something like sweet anticipation, his heart skipping a beat when he pictures setting it into Furiosa's hand to be held safe, safer certainly than he's ever kept it. And he thinks he remembers a green plantling growing from a rocky crag not too far away, thinks what a shame it would be to not see if they might have some use for it (might have some use for him).

And before Max knows it his heart has settled into the rhythm of beating home, home, home.


End file.
